Edited by Pam Brown

Poems by Ken Bolton

When there’s nothing to say —"do you ever just force yourself?" — Michael Grimm, his question

My answer‘No’ is

not true

you dobut not

always

a few days ago, in the empty room< moving > from one room to the other

I find myself doing A Silly Walk— for my amusement —

& it transmutes

into you, one you might do — as a joke, for me ­­––

how weird —I am, briefly, absent you

(The time— after the wake —

able to impersonatethe physical movements

of a dead friend

to my amusementbut just the once

Less accurateWith each repeat

In New Zealandeveryone is called Kevin, Iain, Scott,

Fergus

are the women’s namesso Scottish too?

(Colin, Kevin, Keith)

lots of "Margaret"I take in Greg’s

fanciful, lightly brooding essays

(Gagliardi’s paintingof a levitating priest — a saint,

preposterously floating before acongregation — I mean,

were there really witnesses ?

#

His halo gives him the aura … of — was that his name? —

on the black-&-white TVof childhood, who introduced

The Outer LimitsThe Twilight Zone ?

Richard Sterling?)

A realistbaroque painting —

of me becomingCath Kenneally :

say, my jeans & shoes …‘attached’

— with attendant glow? —

to her upper body

(glow around it),

Crossing the lounge room …Doing

a silly walk —it goes like this —

Legs like Boofhead’s,&

upper bodydoing some Salomé-like thing

— Cecil B. de Mille-style slinky Egypt :Claudette Colbert

(what a name!)

what a mug !

so comically weary(Now, Charlton Heston’s best role …

was as Richelieu —in

The Three Musketeers)

isthat a relevant, a necessary, a true thing to say ?

Hey, no —no need for the police here son (!) ( put that down )

Father O’Dwyeror Brian Fitzpatrick

the Irishman who played ‘nothing but priests’

in the midday movies of my youth& enjoyed a tipple.

Whose youth is not misspent —

Heston’s, Richelieu’s, Colbert’s? —

"these days" —hm?

(YOUTHNOT MISSPENT

headline)

Michael’s wedding — Wendy’s —

they both looked beautiful.& happy. I liked their friends

I was one of them !

but of a different set(my set)

Julie Francesca Anne !

( A DIFFERENT SET )— is that a title?

( The WRONG SET? — was that? )

#I Was One Of Them ?strange tale

of a girl,drugged

& inducted to a — ‘dark’ sect …

butYOUTH NOT MISSPENT!

"for almost seven months Kevin(pictured right) has dug in this hole:

that’s thirty weekends!but who’s counting

says his mother (inleft of photo).

Dad … " (but here our quote ends:‘torn’ from the New Zealand News,

dad not pictured).

I had a dream once of my dad, a sort ofjoke about him: he had this ball & chain attached to his leg

in a fir tree woodgot into a biplane, sat behind the pilot —

& took off —

the plane buzzed furiously, all over the sky,above the mountain that was in the dream

above the fir trees on its peak —

unable to go beyond a certain distance —

& descendedDad, sheepish but amused, got out of the plane,

in his cardigan,

& got the ball

wrapped, as it was,around one of the fir trees, where it had

tethered the plane.

#

I love to say "Are you all right, mate?"

to anything I’ve dropped — & bend to pick up —

or that somethingis not something’s ‘bootlace’

— my dad’s dismissal

of the substandard or secondary"He’s not Elly Bennett’s bootlace!"

( of some pug )

That’s not a tomato’s bootlace: me,of tomato (a dud)

you get the hang of it.

My father worked in a factorybuilt into the foundations

of the Harbour Bridge —regularly enough

a suicide would land outside. One day as the men knocked offa body landed — with a thump —

dead of course —& the new guy asked it (him) the question

— & was taunted with it ‘ever after’

people yelled out to him around the factory

Hey, Frank !Are you all right mate?

#

but don’t force it

#

Which is my answer to Michael:

Give it a try — & if it’s ‘ready’well, something may give.

Maybe, maybe not.

Good to have been Cath, tho, for a whileto have been at that wedding …

& here I hear Michael (Michael Grimm) — alarmed — "Hey,it’s going back !" Who were the great minor actors

of your day? List them.

… Thelma RitterEdmund Gwenn, (Brian Fitzpatrick?),

Errol Flynn?

Julie, Anne, Francesca !

It’s m o i !the amazing Changing Man !

— legs like Boofhead’s head like Cath’s —

Footprints

days of not writing poems, & at nights especially

*

my limbs, moving through the air,as cool about them as an almost liquid medium

*

above the trees there is no mystery. There is just the plane it is crawling slowly along the sky . like a fly along the rim of a lampshade

Wayne Shorter

‘Footprints’ – live

I rub Cath’s beautiful shoulder

I rub the other one, too— Also beautiful

the catis here again, coming up the ladder to the loft

to butt my chin, with its head, purring, like a small enamouredtractor

I am that least admirable of Men I always give up boundless love. now, all I can think is of your nether lip, your entirely strong & specific nervous face & the salty briny brown which I associate with your lips, & with your skin, now seems like rest

(the cat, a head-butter for love)

the secret river that runs like a moon through girls.

the obvious river, that runs (like … men

the running of the bulls at Pamplona

The nun’s story.

(TWO)

now in the afternoon with you it is you I love in the afternoonlight. what’s the name of the feeling I have about you that saysyou should be in a book & illustrating the easy life that comesof never singing out loud but going round always singing in your head & thinking there also ?

already the sun is making the pool roomsin the British Lion too hot in the afternoon or soon will,& the carpet stinks of beer again & parties have begun – Colin’s got a job til Xmas

# a house you lived in

#

the last you had begun to be the luckiest the toaster might catch that sun every morning, & near it the knife, when you get up after every night. — marmalade, or crumb; the toasty cat at its sour white plate, your jeans undone. lemons.

*

the air risks itself among her hair & everything is aroused

the air & things are all aroused & everything, & that.it was like some sort of ‘stuff’

. * "Art"?

there is none : love is artless. There is only the wallpaper

& the chintz & carpet

a chint? ( My kingdom for one! )

the fabulous limp calligraphy of the afternoon

spiritual miles distant from the thought of you

we will be passing the telephone booths soon& then we will be in the suburbs, things that say‘COKE’ against the sky

— I’lljust open the car door & get a bit of fresh air & stare

above the booth, resting.

sky cloud chimney aeroplane

the record player has not been on for hours though the light on the record player glows

but the intense sad notes still ‘haunt’ the air & affect the view, out through the bars,

of the street & the factory across the road

with their own grid, of wire & bars, on all their windows, staring back

the sunday traffic, occasionally, roaring past

I get up, & put on Lou Reed’s ‘Rock n Roll’, which I love. It always makes the bars

seem more neutrally rigorous —

how I’m beginning to feel now.

lists of adjectives for days: terrific days, inelegant days, eloquent days, days like spring & days like summer, impenetrable days literal days the saddest days, days that are stoical, classical or cool

the effect of Donald Brookthe effect of Nigel Roberts.the effect of Forbes, (the effect of taking all their personal

effects &nailing them to a board & comparing them

& of thinking how that, in effect, was like summer;

the effectof looking at the city & knowingyou could / be there.

like your chest is full of brows suddenly / ceasingto frown, now smiling.

days / without parallel, & days, days & days of them, that are allexactly - the - same

the last you had begun to be the luckiest the toaster the sun every morning, & near it the knife, when you get up after every night. — marmalade, or crumb; the toasty cat at its sour white plate, your jeans undone. Lemons

*

hermeticdays .

B: "Art"?

“Shall I place your bags in the vestibule, SUH?!”

dayswhich the artin our mind makes

. Juan Gris, Jack Benny, Frank Stella

like paintings— like the Piano Lesson,like Braque! & terrific days like Jackson Pollock

of Yuri, a bit, Cath’s eldest son, the oneI know least but like & like his difficult life& how he’s dealt with it —“Yuri! I will speak with you later!” My friends the poets, famous,in their way — in the not very satisfying way thatpoets can be — large in my mind at any rate —

& another, rather foolish, at the same time asrather good — well alternately, from poem to poem —something of a comeback. Another friend, ill

seriously mortally time running out. How quickly? Howquickly for us all the question. (‘A’ question.) Anna, &boyfriend Chris, on their anger at / fascination with

The Howard Years documentary aself-serving account but, as they say, so farthe major & lone political fact of their lives

It will be their early history: yech — Reith,Howard himself (whom I never expectedin the 80s I would have to hate — what future

did he have?). The rest.‘Consigned’ now ‘to oblivion’, to echo & re-echoin succeeding waves of revision, counter-construal

like analyses of the Third Republic, the FrenchSecond Empire. Where are we now? Even ‘interesting times’seem to follow a pattern, the bangs & whimpers

louder, more ironically conventional for theirinadequacy to the occasion. Will America go underbecause of Bush? how appropriate

But was that my point? Late at night,not even worrying. Whalen, the Kirchner drawings.

Go under? What,next week?

Okay, then.

"It may never happen!" Isn’t that the joke? If it takes ten years, if it takes twenty,it will be cataclysmic. Tho — 20 years —

I might be out of the way — or less concerned —if curious as to the outcomes. Fortwenty years — for thirty — I have been amused

But, as they’re engaged, I explain, to their answering machine,& promise to ring back. Then I go & seek change

from various of the punters awaiting trainswho of course assume I’m begging

but get the correct change to make another call —to no avail

& here I am.

Now I ring Kurt. That is, next I ring him — that is my plan

& head on down to Bulli, in two minds about the shoes

*

At Diethnes

The boring bastard — specializesin unsurprising revelations (“I can’t eat Mushrooms — I can eatmushroom sauce but I can’t eat mushrooms”) — & in revelations that thingstaken as surprising aren’t so: Americanslanded on the moon — but they’ll never be able to do it againunaided. (Think of that.) Most of the stupefied people around himwilt or fill their glass. I putmy pen thru his forehead, salute his dinner partners& leave to catch my train.

(A single simple stabbing motion.)

•

• September Song for John Jenkins & Pam Brown

I was …I was born in the 70s— no no — I was young inthe 70s, so the 80s still seemnew to me. Most of you, I realise,were born then, or later,& of course I’m so oldI might conceivablydie — before the end of this lecture,which would be funny (tho I do notwelcome it & I am not surefrom what perspective it couldreally be funny. From mine,if you imagine the pluperfectregarded from the future. For those of you — are there any? — whohave no Latin,that would be a little like bowling a ball, slowly,& running quickly down the greento see it ‘arrive’, to kiss the dark ballat the other end. Is that the ‘eight-ball’,or is that in pool? — the dark ball‘of death’, which would effectivelyend the lecture, & my life —you’d have forgotten about me after the lectureeither way. And there is a phrase for that& it’s not non modo sed etiam, one I lovedin my overdetermined way: “not only but also”.&, forgotten, I can get some rest at last(for which there is ‘something’, probably,in Virgil). I who am about to diesalute you: September 26thtwo thousand & ten. Drinks glass of water,taps mike.

I look out the window as the light changes& see we are crossing water — the lake

or inlet that was Otford — &, on theshore opposite, the house & boatshed

Listen along with the feature

In conjunction with this Jacket2 feature, Pam Brown organized a PennSound anthology of Australian poetry that showcases recordings from more than two dozen of the poets found herein. The majority of these recordings were made over the past several years, and give outsiders an excellent sense of the reading series in Australia and New Zealand that are driving a vital poetry scene (in much the same way that this feature stresses the network of journals sustaining the scene).